BOOK I. I. 28-11. 3
Wherefore, what was it that Agrippinus used to remark? "I am not standing in my own way."[1] Word was brought him, "Your case is being tried in the Senate."—"Good luck betide! But it is the fifth hour now" (he was in the habit of taking his exercise and then a cold bath at that hour); "let us be off and take our exercise." 30After he had finished his exercise someone came and told him, "You have been condemned."—"To exile," says he, "or to death?"—"To exile."—"What about my property?"—"It has not been confiscated."—"Well then, let us go to Aricia and take our lunch there." This is what it means to have rehearsed the lessons one ought to rehearse, to have set desire and aversion free from every hindrance and made them proof against chance. I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now, since the hour for lunch has come, and afterwards I will die at the appointed time. How? As becomes the man who is giving back that which was another's.
CHAPTER II
How may a man preserve his proper character[2] upon every occasion?
To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable. Blows are not by nature unendurable.—How so?—Observe how: Lacedaemonians take a scourging[3] once they have learned that it is rational.—But is it not unendurable to be hanged?—Hardly; at all events whenever a man feels that it is rational he goes and
- ↑ The idea seems to be: By disregarding externals I do not hinder the natural course of my mind and character, that is, my true self.
- ↑ The word πρὀσωπον carries something of the figurative meaning "rôle" from the language of drama.
- ↑ Referring to the scourging of Spartan youths before the altar of Artemis.
